


The Lamb and her Horsemen

by snapbackbuddies



Category: Far Cry 5
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, F/M, Multi, Soulmate AU, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:33:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26740699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snapbackbuddies/pseuds/snapbackbuddies
Summary: With four sentences tattooed on her wrist and four sibling cult leaders, Deputy Natalie Rook is beginning to see a pattern she doesn’t like.
Relationships: Faith Seed/Jacob Seed/John Seed/Joseph Seed/Original Female Character(s), Female Deputy | Judge/Faith Seed, Female Deputy | Judge/Jacob Seed, Female Deputy | Judge/John Seed, Female Deputy | Judge/Joseph Seed, Polyseed - Relationship
Comments: 4
Kudos: 81





	The Lamb and her Horsemen

**Author's Note:**

> me? getting into a fandom two years after the initial release of the subject matter? yeah that's typical
> 
> here's this because i refuse to choose one of the seeds over the other. im love all of them so my deputy will always date all of them thanks. but this is short and sweet!! they don't officially get together or anything, but. u know. it's complicated
> 
> anyways love u please enjoy!

"God will not let them take me from you."

Alarm bells start ringing in Natalie's head. Wait, she thinks, because the other shoe hasn't quite dropped yet, but it's coming fast, just as soon as her brain catches up. "Rook, cuff this son of a bitch."

Natalie makes eye contact with Joseph Seed. He offers his wrists up. For some reason there's a whisper in her head, telling her the glance at the inside of his wrist. She resists, but that's fine, because it's not the words on his wrist she should be worried about right this second.

“God will not let you take me.”

It's hers.

“You’ve got to be shitting me.”

Joseph's eyes fill with sudden clarity. Shock flitters over his face for just a moment before it shutters away, turns into determination. "We held faith in God and he has rewarded us," he breathes, then raises his voice for his followers. Natalie is still staring at him, lips parted. His hands are reaching toward her, so she takes a step back. "God has sent us Hell, as I promised, and he has rewarded us! This misguided soul is my soulmate, the one fated for me by the grace of God. She will be saved. She is our family!"

"Oh, fucking hell, Rook," Burke hisses.

Joseph snatches her wrist in his hand while she's looking at Burke, turns it over to see what she hates for anyone to see— the four sentences on her wrist, one after the other. Four soulmates. It's practically unheard of. She doesn't care to address it with most people, let alone strangers. She jerks her arm back, but Joseph holds fast. He looks at her through his yellow lenses and _smiles_. "Oh, my Lamb," he breathes.

Joseph's siblings stand behind her, watching her with sharp and curious eyes. Her gaze slides over them anxiously. "Let me go," she snaps, and finally wrenches her wrist free. "You– you're under arrest, Joseph Seed."

"Soulmates aren't legally permitted to arrest one another," the Sheriff says at her side.

"So you do it!" Natalie snarls, whirling on Whitehorse. He should've been arresting Joseph in the first place and if he had she wouldn't even be in this mess, so as far as she's concerned everyone in this room can go to hell. "I'm getting the– I'm getting the hell out of here."

A few hands snatch at her as she turns her back on Joseph. She pushes them away testily. "Let her go, my Children," Joseph calls, wholly unconcerned. "God will lead her back to us. What is destined to be will be."

Oh, fucking Christ, Natalie thinks as she slams out of the church doors. Hudson startles, on edge immediately. "I– Rook, where the hell are you going? Is everything okay in there?"

"No, it's not," she snaps. She doesn't bother to stop walking to answer Hudson. "I'm going to the helicopter. Sheriff Whitehorse was right, we shouldn't have come here."

/

“Not this one," John Seed says, his figure blurry and undefined through the Bliss, but Natalie still knows it's him, and she can't help but admit somewhere in the back of her head that Joseph is right. Only a higher power could do this to her. Two insane brothers. Two out of four soulmates.

A cruel fucking higher power.

John is a cat and she's the canary. "This one’s not clean yet." And he clamps his hands on her shoulders, pressing her down toward the water.

Desperately, she spits out, “Fuck, you can't—“ and her head goes under the water.

John pulls her up near instantly and stares at her. He looks… he looks horrified. "No," he breathes, still clutching her shoulders. Natalie is blinking water out of her eyes. "I… I didn't believe Joseph when he— I never dreamed—" His mouth is starting to twitch into a stunned smile, cheeks pushing up, eyes crinkling, mouth ajar.

"You've spoken to her, John?"

John's mouth clamps shut the moment he hears Joseph's voice, expression closing off. "I have," he says, voice clipped.

"And?" Joseph asks calmly, stepping up to John's side. John steps aside, his right hand dropping from her shoulder. He doesn't relinquish his hold on her other shoulder– can't, maybe. "She's your intended?"

John's eyes are low, fixed on the ground. "Yes, Joseph."

Natalie blinks very hard. "You've had the f-word on your wrist your entire life?" John's lips twitch. She thinks maybe he's warding off a smile, but she's still pretty Blissed out of her mind. She can't help but smile stupidly. "My bad."

Joseph's hand rises to cradle the side of her head. "She's not in her usual frame of mind," he murmurs, thumb delicately stroking the baby hairs in front of her ear. It's pretty nice. "Why don't you take her to your ranch to recover." Natalie frowns.

"Yes, Joseph."

"That sounds dangerous," she slurs.

Joseph pets her cheek one last time, gives John a meaningful look, then pulls him in to a forehead touch by the back of the neck. "Take care of her," he murmurs. "Make sure she Confesses and Atones. She will pass through the Gates of Eden at our side, John… if she is not saved, you will not be saved either. Do you understand?"

John swallows. Nods.

When they're alone, John stares after Joseph, then turns to her with something guarded in his eyes. "We'll see if you're really my soulmate," he mutters, and tugs her forward.

"Take me home," she purrs, stupid and high, but she can tell John's only pretending not to be amused by her.

/

When she's thinking clearly, Natalie is beginning to see a pattern she doesn’t like.

Well. Doesn't like in theory. She's seeing the pattern as she's tucked into John's king bed. He took the couch and let her have it.

Maybe it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.

/

“I know you've heard stories about me.”

“Damnit, not all of you.”

She appears in Natalie's line of sight with a smile on her face. Big, genuine. "Oh, Deputy. This is great news." She laughs, girlish and excited, Natalie's hands gripped tight in her own. "Don't you know what this means? It means the Father was right! You're our family." When Natalie just stares at her, dizzy, her face falls a little. "Don't you want to be ours?"

Disappointing Faith seems bad. Natalie doesn't want to to that, so she nods. Faith grins big again. "I've been Blessed with such a good soulmate. We all have."

Natalie blinks. "You're nicer than I thought you'd be."

Faith's grin changes somehow, just slightly. Something in her eyes shifts, softens. "I like you too, Natalie." That's not what Natalie said, but she'll let it slide. Faith's eyes are green, a deeper green than the mist of the Bliss that surrounds them, and Natalie's pretty focused on admiring that. "Can you do something for me, Natalie?" Natalie's not sure if she nods, she's so dizzy, but Faith goes on so she must have. "Can you prove your faith?"

"To you?"

"To our cause," Faith insists. Her face is very close to Natalie's. "To the Father."

Faith guides her, flies her up through the Bliss to the top of Joseph's statue. Natalie wishes she had a clue what was going on in real life, because somewhere in the back of her mind, she knows none of this can be real. It feels real, but that's the point. "Take a leap of faith, Deputy Rook… the Father will keep his word."

Natalie edges forward, conscious of how much she's swaying, too peer carefully over the edge of the statue. "His word?"

"To love you. To save you."

"Thought he was always gonna try to do that," Natalie mutters and steps back from the book's edge. She cant even see the bottom of the fall. "Just 'cos I jump doesn't mean I'll love him. Or trust him."

"It's the first step," Faith murmurs in her ear, palms coming to rest warm and easy on her shoulders. "The scariest, but the most important." A kiss is dropped gently to the back of her neck. "Can you take the first step for us?"

Faith guides her slowly forward. Natalie doesn't resist. "Will… you do it with me? I don't want to do it alone."

"Joseph would tell you some tests must be done alone..." she says softly, "but I'm not Joseph. I don't feel like denying you anything. Let's take this first step together. Prove our devotion to our Father, and to each other. Okay?"

"Okay," Natalie agrees, and she steps off the towering statue with Faith's arms on her shoulders.

When she wakes on blood-slick stone, surrounded by dead bodies, she can still feel the warmth of Faith's small hands.

/

Pratt tells her she should've run. Natalie knows that was never even an option. Not just because she'll never leave her friends behind.

There's one more sentence on her wrist that has yet to be spoken into existence.

"The world is weak," Jacob begins as he strolls into her field of vision, in front of his projector showing images of dead deer and snarling wolves. He continues on about how soft and weak the world has become, how godless and powerless the leaders are, how unprepared everyone is for the Collapse. Typical cult garbage. He addresses the men tied up in front of her as he does, first on the left, then on the right.

He stalks toward her next, the lines of his body relaxed, unworried. Maybe they both know exactly what's coming— maybe he's just as ready as her for what's coming next.

Jacob speaks and puts his hands on the arms of her chair, leaning in close, and drawing her chair closer yet. "Now, the end is upon us, and this time the lives of the few outweigh the lives of the many." Natalie wishes she had it in her to feel any kind of shock or anger at the confirmation of what she already knew. "And when a nation that's never known hunger or desperation descends into madness, we'll be ready."

“Lengthy first sentence to tattoo on my arm, you know," she says conversationally. "Takes up a lotta space.”

"Well, I'll be damned." Jacob crouches, face hovering above her knees, and stares up at her. Looking his fill while she's tied up and vulnerable. "Joseph was right. You're stuck with all of us."

Natalie stares at him, dry and unreactive. "He prophesied that I would be soulmate to all of you?"

Jacob smiles and it doesn't crinkle his eyes. "Don't know what he prophesied, but I know what he guessed after he met you. When his Lamb was his soulmate, with three more unknown soulmates… you just about made everything he said about _the Hell that follows_ ," that part is growled like he's echoing Joseph's serious voice, "absolutely concrete for him." He pauses. "And by God, was he right, huh?"

Natalie twists her wrists absently in their bonds. "Guess so. He right about anything else so far?"

Jacob's eyes flicker over her face. He's hard to see in the dim light, but she can feel his hands curled loosely around her ankles. There's scarring over his face, she can see that, long-healed burns. She wonders how badly he'd startle if she ever tried to touch them with gentle fingers. If he'd hate it or love it.

She rubs her fingers together to dispel the magnetic pull she feels toward Jacob.

"Couple things," Jacob says as he stands. He reaches for a small wooden box on the table at her side, then hesitates. "You see… the plans we laid before you came have been hard to hold to, now that we know what you are." Natalie's eyes flicker to the box, then back up to his eyes. "Had John in a tizzy…" he shrugs, turning the box over in his hands, "Faith was about the same. And me…"

Jacob sets the box down. "Well. I'm gonna be worse than John, I think."

Natalie feels strangely relaxed that Jacob has set the box down. "That seems out of character."

Jacob smiles. It's a good look on him. "Never had a soulmate before. Might not be out of character when it comes to you." Natalie almost smiles, but she's still tied up. Jacob taps the top of the box with his fingernail. "Now, I can't let you go if you're just gonna run around these mountains and cause trouble for me." He's still smiling while he levels her with a capital-L Look. "Are you gonna cause trouble?"

"Yes, sir," Natalie says instantly. "I have people to save."

Jacob's eyes shift to somewhere behind her. "Alright, Peaches, get Rook outta here. Take her to my room. I'll be there shortly."

Pratt comes to cut her out of the chair, staring at her in bewilderment as he does. "You're his fucking soulmate too?" he hisses as Jacob goes back to the front of the room, rambling more with the wooden box in his hand again. He's not opening it yet, though— stalling until she's gone.

"Yeah," Natalie says, stumbling after him, out of the room. "Yeah, I'm— all of them."

"Fucking hell, Rook," he mutters. "You're fucking in for it."

"I don't know." She darts her gaze over the hallways of the Veteran's Center, catching on phrases and blood splatters and cracks through the drywall. "I think… I think it might not be so bad, with them. I know they've got their… problems, but… I think… learning to be their soulmate is going to help me more than turning my back to them."

Pratt huffs derisively. Natalie knows he's thinner, covered in bruises and cuts. She understands. "I'll take your fuckin' word for it."

If it's destiny, God or not, like Joseph says, she'll give it a chance. She'll has her fears and reservations, but—

There's something drawing her to these Seeds. She won't turn her back on it.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!! please kudos and comment if you enjoyed!!
> 
> find my on tumblr at @stacispratt!!


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